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Chicago Runs Out of Wind

Philadelphia 76ers’ Thaddeus Young during Game 6 against the Chicago Bulls.

Realists will tell you that the Chicago Bulls were essentially kaput after Derrick Rose tore his ACL in the first game of the NBA playoffs. But regardless of expectations as to how the Bulls could or would adjust to the loss of their leader, it’s safe to say that anything would’ve been better than the way they were eliminated from the postseason by the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday night.

It was heartbreaking, enabled by poor decision-making, and emotionally ruinous in the only way that sports can be, at least for Bulls fans. For Philadelphia, it was an amazing finish. With less than ten seconds in the game and a one-point lead, Bulls center Omer Asik missed two free throws, opening the door for Sixers forward Andre Iguodala to get fouled after a last-second drive. Iguodala then iced two free throws to go ahead by one, making the Sixers the fifth eighth-seeded team in NBA history to advance to the second round of the playoffs. The Bulls, on the other hand, return home with the unpleasant question of whether Rose’s knee will properly heal by next season. That’s not to say there aren’t ways to be optimistic about the disappointing finish, as Yahoo’s Kelly Dwyer says. “Nothing ever makes sense with Chicago, even if the team’s style is as one-note (you play, hard) as they come. I just have to put that in place,” he writes. “Not as some warming or even defense mechanism to make us feel less empty, as we walk away from a Bulls season that never seemed to have a chance. But we have to remind ourselves of what an absolute trip this has been.”

In what ended up being a dramatic finale, the Boston Celtics were also able to close out their series against the Atlanta Hawks. Leading by nine points with six minutes left, Boston watched as Atlanta made a run to get back in it. But Kevin Garnett hit the go-ahead shot like a player in his prime, rather than one who missed the entire 2009 playoffs with wear-and-tear knee trouble. And despite the abundance of wear and even more tear, the Celtics, once again, cannot be counted out. “The Celtics need [Ray] Allen and his bum ankle to get healthier and for him to make shots. They need [Paul] Pierce’s knee to hold up. They need Garnett to bring back some of that old-school KG, like what we saw on Thursday night,” Jeff Goodman writes for CBS Sports. “Because let’s face it: No one wants to see a Philadelphia-Miami Eastern Conference finals except for maybe Sir Charles, Moses Malone and Andrew ‘The Boston Strangler’ Toney.”

The Los Angeles Lakers, however, become the first team in the playoffs to be pushed to a Game 7 after failing to knock out the Denver Nuggets. From the start, the Nuggets were in terrifying form, scoring the first 13 points of the game in the first 3 minutes. Though the Lakers slowly began to make things respectable, an imbalanced third quarter led by Ty Lawson erased any chance of a comeback. Kobe Bryant’s Kobe-ness, personified by the welcome-to-the-league flagrant foul he committed against Nuggets rookie Kenneth Faried and the way he stayed on the court as the blowout became insurmountable, meant that he still scored 31 points after entering the game with a well-publicized illness. But once again, Kobe Doing Work was enabled by the Lakers Playing Bad. To just about no one’s liking, Game 7 will start at the last hour of 10:30pm Eastern on Saturday night.

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The debate over whether city or team should pay for a new stadium can turn ugly whenever owners and city legislators begin to differ over who should pay for what, and whether or not the taxpayer should be on the hook for the privilege of using a nice bathroom. A threat to relocate is not uncommon. On Thursday, Minnesotans were spared the drama when the state Senate passed a bill to partially fund a new stadium, which will replace the 30-year old Metrodome. As it breaks down, the Vikings will pay a little less than half the $1 billion cost of construction, with the rest paid by the state and the city of Minneapolis. That means they’ll stick in Minnesota for at least 30 years, rather than moving to Los Angeles or any other football-starved city.

Now, the fans can get back to wondering whether Adrian Peterson’s knee is healing properly, and whether Christian Ponder has any future in town. One day at a time, as that the biggest hurdle has been crossed. “Vikings fans, you guys lucked out,” writes ESPN’s Kevin Seifert. “This could have been ugly and easily might have ended differently. [Owner] Zygi Wilf made sure it didn’t.”

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In J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels, the sport of choice in the wizarding world is called Quidditch, a complex game of balls and brawls that’s played in the air on flying broomsticks. Because some “Harry Potter” readers are maniacally passionate about their fandom, Quidditch has been adapted into a real-life sport, one where the flying broomsticks are substituted by ones that must be held between the legs at all times. Think of it as lacrosse meets rugby meets imaginary iconography. Yes, it’s very goofy, but intense competition has developed between loosely organized teams, many of which come to the now-annual Quidditch World Cup on New York’s Randall’s Island to run around like play-wizards for a weekend while also beating the hell out each other. (It’s allowed in the rules, amazingly.) In the last week, both BuzzFeed and Outside Magazine published long pieces about the nascent sport. BuzzFeed’s Noah Davis looks at the greater evolution of Quidditch culture, while Outside’s Eric Hansen actually formed his own team, entered it in competition at the 2011 World Cup, and learned a lot of things.

“The more I Googled around, however, the more Quidditch piqued my interest. I imagined writing something snarky, maybe poking fun at how Quidditch started out as a decidedly preppy sport, heedless of Rowling’s ‘Quidditch Through the Ages,’ which suggests the game be played on ‘deserted moorland far from Muggle habitations.’ Or I’d lampoon its comical misfires: before settling on a tennis ball in a sock, for example, some teams had tried using a remote-controlled helicopter for the snitch,” Hansen writes. “As for the sport itself, it just seemed like a hoot.”

SPORTS, THE JOURNAL WAY

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